Council applies for cash from chewing gum firms

The drive to clean chewing gum off the county’s streets has taken a step forward following a decision by North Yorkshire Council. 

The local authority has agreed to apply for a grant of up to £27,500 from Keep Britain Tidy to purchase specialist chewing gum removal equipment. 

Keep Britain Tidy is administering the grants on behalf of the Chewing Gum Task Force, which brings together some of the UK’s major chewing gum producers, including Mars Wrigley, which makes Orbit and Extra, and Italian-Dutch firm Perfetti Van Melle, best known as the maker of Fruit-tella and Smint, in a partnership to remove gum litter from UK high streets and prevent future littering. 

Participating firms have pledged to invest up to £10 million over five years to achieve two objectives: cleaning up staining caused by gum and changing behaviour so that more people bin their gum. This is the third year that grants have been available, but this is the first time that North Yorkshire Council has applied for a grant from the fund.

The grants are supplemented by fully-funded gum litter prevention packages for each council, including targeted behaviour change signage and advice, designed and produced by social enterprise Behaviour Change. 

Last year, 55 councils across the UK benefitted from the grant fund, and the £1.65 million distributed helped clean more than 100 acres of urban streets.

By combining targeted street-cleansing with specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils have seen reductions in gum littering of up to 80% in the first two months, with a reduced rate of gum littering still being observed after six months.

However bad North Yorkshire’s gum problem is, many other places have it far worse. Mexico City, for example, employs an army of full-time gum-cleaners, and New York – dubbed the “gum splotch capital of the world” by the New York Times – has been waging a well-publicised but losing war against discarded gum since the 1930s. Singapore even banned chewing gum in 1992, and people spitting it out onto the street risk fines of up to $1,000.

North Yorkshire Council’s decision to apply for the grant was only approved by the its Corporate Director, Environment and Assistant Director, Resources on Wednesday (March 27), but the deadline for grant applications to Keep Britain Tidy fell at midday today.

The Stray Ferret has asked North Yorkshire Council whether the deadline was met.

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Yemi’s Food Stories: Easter baking with cupboard staples

Yemi Adelekan is a food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in the 2022 series of BBC TV’s Masterchef competition.

Every Saturday Yemi writes on the Stray Ferret about her love of the area’s food and shares cooking tips – please get in touch with her if you want her to review a restaurant, visit your farm, taste the produce you sell or even share a recipe.

Easter season is here which means it’s time to make a mess and bake with the little ones, from hot cross buns to no bake creations.

Many of us have a bit more time on our hands and often need to entertain adults and children during the holidays. You might find yourself wondering what to cook or bake during the school holidays or when you have guests without having to go to the supermarket.

I love looking through my cupboard and fridge to see what is available there. Ingredients that I usually can always find include canned pineapple chunks – I use Del Monte –  oats, flour, butter, sugar, almond flour, chocolate chunks and coconut milk.

With these staples, I can create my favourite drinks or bake some goodies from cookies to cakes.

Here is a recipe using ingredients that most of us should have at home. It’s cheap, cheerful and delicious – costing only 56p per serving, the recipe will be enough for 16 servings and ready in just over an hour.

Pineapple white chocolate cake with salted brown sugar glaze 

Preparation: 20 mins      

Cooking time: 45 mins

Before baking

Ingredients:

 Cake:

Salted brown sugar glaze:

Instructions:

After baking

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The auction house where Mouseman sits alongside Ikea

For some of us, auction houses are regarded as niche and expensive, the kind of places you might look for a unique piece of vintage jewellery, antique furniture or a collector’s item. 

But what is perhaps less well known is that alongside these higher-end auctioneers are auction houses that offer more affordable and everyday pieces.

Thompson’s Auctioneers in Killinghall is one such place. While the odd piece of furniture goes for over £1,000 – and a sideboard 12 years ago went for £8,000 – the average is about £80 to £100. Well-known names such as Mouseman and Ercol pop up now and again, but the saleroom is largely made up of reasonably-priced furniture, household and garden items, and gold and silver jewellery.

Lots in Thompson’s auctions, held every Friday, usually carry estimates of between £20 and £800. 

And not all of it is vintage or antique. Ikea rugs and Emma Bridgewater bowls sit alongside Victorian necklaces and 1960s drop leaf tables. There are collections and trays of assorted jewellery, glassware and coins, and even some white goods. Each weekly sale opens up a new Aladdin’s Cave, and you never know what you might find there. 

Ercol and Vanson

It’s this element of discovery that is one of the things Thompson’s director Kate Higgins loves about her job. As well as leading the auctions, she spends her week sifting through items at house clearances and valuations. She said: 

“It’s exciting. I love it, I like going to look at a job. I’ve been to house clearances where you can barely get through the front door and you have to go through all of it but it’s worth it because of what you might come across.” 

Among the pieces that Kate occasionally finds and sells are pieces by the famous Kilburn furniture maker Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson and the ‘Yorkshire Critters’ group of makers who were inspired by him. A Beaverman oak table and six chairs went for £1,500 a couple of weeks ago, while a Mouseman ashtray and set of nested tables was in the most recent sale. Kate said:  

“They are quite desirable. We get quite a lot of 1960s teak furniture which is very popular. People are paying decent prices for that. We’ve had a nice Ercol blond elm table and four chairs for £380 and a Vanson teak sideboard for £300.” 

Changing times

The auction house was started in 1989 by Brian Thompson. Kate has been at Thompson’s for 25 years and when Brian retired in 2012, she and another employee, Colin Evans, bought the business. Kate had started doing the auctions a few years before after remarking to Brian how easy it looked, to which he had answered, ‘Get up and do it then.’ She did, and found she loved it. 

Thompson's Auctioneers auction house in Killinghall

Kate Higgins, director of Thompson’s Auctioneers.

But times have changed. Since Thompson’s were forced to take their auctions online during the pandemic and it’s stayed that way, Kate now finds herself leading the sale by “staring at a computer and talking to myself. It’s not quite the same but you have to move with the times”.

But she recognises the benefits that being online brings in reaching a wider audience and enabling more lots to be sold. Each week, about 500 lots are listed in the auction, and it takes around four hours to get through them all. Bids can come from far and wide, and items are shipped anywhere as long as the customer pays for the costs. Kate said: 

“Ninety-nine percent of people have been absolutely fine with us being totally online, even the older generation. There’s still the chance for buyers to view the lots between 3pm and 7pm on Thursdays, and people can drop off and collect items on Saturdays and Mondays. But most people are happy to buy from the website without viewing the piece in person. 

“We were shut for a year during the pandemic, and it took a while to get going again. We are actually selling more now than we were pre-covid. We are so busy that we are looking for more staff to help collect furniture – there’s currently a four-week waiting time for us to collect items from sellers.” 

Period drama props

Among their customers are regulars that come in for a browse every week, while others visit for specific items. She’s seen an increase in customers looking for affordable household goods while others are after a little project. They even have two or three TV companies looking for authentic props to use in period dramas. 

While the trend for ‘shabby chic’ has died down and people are no longer looking for cheap furniture to paint, original pieces that can be restored and reupholstered are in demand. Kate said people will go away and research items and are happy to buy them with faults such as woodworm or damage if it’s the kind of thing they are looking for. And the popularity of items can also change as fashions come and go. She said: 

“At the moment antiques are not very popular because nobody wants dark mahogany anymore, they want the lighter colours such as beech, ash and elm. Years ago, people would collect pieces of crockery and display them in cabinets but they don’t do that any more. People are buying second-hand furniture and watching what they spend.”

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Editor’s Pick of the Week: Bettys Easter egg, sewage and new offices

Easter is a time to ponder the big questions in life, such as: what happens to the giant egg in the window of Bettys in Harrogate?

Reporter Lauren Ryan has been tracking down the answer. Look for her article on Sunday.

The Stray Ferret is now a stone’s throw from Bettys — we moved into our new office on Cambridge Crescent on Monday. I may have a claim for the best view from office in Harrogate. It’ll look even better if the sun ever comes out.

Talking of throwing things, my Wednesday morning routine was abruptly cut short this week when I heard Harrogate’s Parliament Street was closed die to a police incident.

I hotfooted it to the scene in time to find a shocking number of broken windows in the buildings above shops. The ages of the boys arrested was even more hard to believe.

Some of the smashed windows on Parliament Street.

Political shenanigans are hotting up in a year of elections of ever-increasing magnitude: there’s the Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone council by-election in April, the North Yorkshire mayor election in May and a general election further down the track.

The Lib Dems were reported to the police this week when their by-election candidate sent out a leaflet falsely claiming the Green Party wasn’t standing. Andrew Jones, the Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, wrote to Lib Dem leader Ed Davey claiming the local Lib Dems had “totally gone rogue”, which drew a sharp retort that he was “out of touch”.

The political wrangling continued when the Environment Agency released its latest data about sewage discharges, which made unpleasant reading for those of us living close to the Nidd and Ure, i.e. everyone in the former Harrogate district.

Mr Jones and his Lib Dem rival Tom Gordon had vastly different takes on the results.

Politics is a dirty business — and with elections looming, it’s only likely get murkier.

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Harrogate interior designers share their top spring trends

(Above: Farrow & Ball, Design Alchemy: Kevin Miyazaki, Walls: Setting Plaster No.231, Cabinets: Bamboozle No.304)

Spring has officially sprung, and if you’re looking to spruce up your living space this season, here’s what’s trending right now.

Earthier tones

This year has been a rise in the popularity of rich, natural browns, a trend that was recently seen at London Design Week 2024. These can help to bring warmth to a space and can be used in different shades throughout the home, such as through the choice of flooring, wall colour and soft furnishings.

Rebecca von Achten from Just So Interiors in Harrogate describes:

“Earthy colours like chocolate, clay and nutmeg add warmth and cosiness and this year are forecast to supersede paler neutrals.”

She also explained how colour drenching – painting walls, ceilings and woodwork all in the one colour – remains in vogue, and has replaced feature walls as a way to make a statement and impact in a room.

(Zoffany Paint, Raw Umber)

Rebecca Thomas, junior interior designer at Richard Grafton Interiors in Harrogate, details how the colour can be implemented in homes:

“Browns can be introduced gently using natural wood floors or tables, chocolatey-hued mohair throws, rich tortoiseshell accessories, as well as local artisan latte-toned ceramics while dark mahogany and walnut will bring warmth and richness to interiors, making the space feel cosy and elegant.”

(Richard Grafton Interiors)

Bright and bold colours

In total contrast, as well as there being a step away from neutrals – especially greys ­– in recent years, there has been a move towards colour.

(Richard Grafton Interiors)

Bright hues can add the wow-factor and the use of colour can be implemented through various schemes; whether its through statement key furniture pieces or simply with cushions that can be rotated as the seasons change.

Rebecca Thomas explained how the use through of colour in an interior space can lift your mood when needed, promote joyfulness and creativity but also sooth and calm. She went on to describe the colours that are standing out for Richard Grafton Interiors at the moment:

“Pinks, greens, reds and yellows are very much taking centre stage for the more daring of us. Being colour confident is not a trend that’s going ‘out’ anytime soon.

Go all out with maximalism

As well as this year being all about unconventional colour combinations, patterns and maximalist décor are also becoming big in the world of interiors. Rebecca von Achten explains:

“This spring we’re seeing a chintz revival with ‘Nancy Meyers’ style interiors, floral patterns, contrasting textiles and vintage pieces dominating the interior world. It’s all about surrounding yourself with things that spark joy and displaying them to look carefully curated.

(Farrow & Ball, Design Alchemy: Kevin Miyazaki, Walls: Setting Plaster No.231, Cabinets: Bamboozle No.304)

“Don’t worry if extravagant wallpaper, lavish wall art or floral sofas isn’t in the budget though; start small by adding checkerboard, gingham or striped patterns, ruffled cushions, scalloped edge accessories and a variety of vintage finds that evoke the feeling of nostalgia.”

Shapes

(Richard Grafton Interiors)

There has also been a move away from angular square and rectangular furniture that can often look harsh in spaces, with homeowners looking more towards organic, softer contours for their pieces, even down to the finer details such as vases and display pieces. Rebecca Thomas elaborates:

“The more rounded silhouettes bring natural flow, complementing harsh architectural straight lines of the typical home. From puddle shaped relaxed dining tables, curved sofas to wavey cabinetry and bobbin handles, organic shapes continue to trend this spring.”

Don’t forget… peach is back

(Farrow & Ball, Walls: Setting Plaster No.231)

Pantone has declared its 2024 colour ‘peach fuzz’, a hue that’s aimed to evoke a sense of kindness and ‘warm fuzzy feeling’ to a space, and it also marks the 25th anniversary of the Pantone Colour of the Year.

And finally, your outside space…

(Susie Watson Design)

As the weather starts to warm up, there’s more and more opportunity to socialise outside, giving the perfect opportunity to dress the garden table for the occasion. Tracy Stark, head of retail at Susie Watson Designs in Harrogate says:

“At this time of year, I tend to favour the softer pastel colours at home and in the garden and am always thinking of pretty table arrangements such as our Fritillary pottery collection that’s perfect for spring entertaining.”

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What the UK’s top climate scientist wants from the next governmentWhat the UK’s top climate scientist wants from the next government

There can’t be many people whose grasp of environmental issues is broader than Professor Piers Forster’s. Locally, he’s patron of Zero Carbon Harrogate and has campaigned against the expansion of Harrogate Spring Water’s bottling plant, but in his day job he operates at a different scale altogether.  

He’s professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds and director of the university’s Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, and since 2018 he’s also been interim chair of the government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC), representing the UK at the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai last year. As a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he was instrumental in getting the world to aim for a global warming limit of 1.5°C and helped persuade the UK government to adopt its Net Zero 2050 target.

One week he can be talking about saving saplings in Rotary Wood, the next he’ll be advising on global carbon reduction targets.

When the Stray Ferret spoke to him at his home in Harrogate, he’d just got back from Oslo; in a couple of months he’ll be off to Bonn, in December it’s Azerbaijan, and at some point he expects to go to Beijing for bilateral talks with the Chinese government’s advisers. 

The irony of someone with his brief jetting off around the world is not lost on him. He said: 

“I fly for work because I’m an international climate scientist, but I am now more conscious of whether I really have to get on an aeroplane. 

“I’m not at all perfect, but I have become more conscious of my green carbon footprint over time. We have an old diesel car. We could have an electric car, but I don’t drive the car at all, really. I drive it once every four months. 

“I walk into town, I take public transport to work at the University of Leeds and go down to Westminster on the train. I walk to the supermarket to get the exercise. 

“My wife’s Australian and going back there has a big carbon footprint, but I do not think that preventing people from going to see their family around the world or escape the wet, dreary winter… I think it’d be very difficult to say ‘You can’t do that’.” 

It is this sense of pragmatism – a practical approach rooted in an appreciation of the world as it is – that politicians across the spectrum value, and is perhaps why Prof Forster is still in post at the CCC six years after he was appointed to it temporarily. 

He also appears to be a glass-half-full kind of climate scientist, a tendency that always goes down better than doom-mongering, which inevitably implies reducing services or spending more money. 

He said: 

“We see wildfires in Portugal and Spain and we’re beginning to see them coming to this country now. We’ve had incredibly high temperatures in Canada, we had huge fires sweeping across California, and they shut down Silicon Valley for a bit. We’ve seen drought in China that meant they couldn’t supply water to their industries, so they had to shut them down for a bit too.

“If you look at the UK, we get off better than virtually any other country, and yet we’ve had by far the wettest winter ever recorded. Flooding is the greatest threat for us.

“But I’m an optimist. I think we have the ability to stop this. We’re not on track, of course, to hit our targets, but we’re also not completely off track. With concerted effort we can get back on track.

“We ought to be able to build more resilient infrastructure, and there’s opportunity now with the whole Net Zero transition thing, with brand-new grid and energy storage and offshore and onshore wind, or onshore solar. We do have the opportunity to try and make our towns and countryside more resilient.”

Photo of Harrogate resident Professor Piers Forster, who is interim chair of the government's Climate Change Committee, at the meeting in Incheon, South Korea, to approve the ​IPCC's 1.5C report in 2018.

Prof Piers Forster at the meeting in Incheon, South Korea, to approve the ​IPCC’s 1.5°C report in 2018.

While the benefits to the environment of developing a more sustainable economy are clear, he says that there are business opportunities that could further incentivise their development. He said: 

“It’s going to be challenging for the SMEs – they’re going to struggle with all the red tape, so we have to try and make it easy and support them to change. But for our other industries, especially the financial-type service industries, there are big opportunities, not only to support decarbonisation here, but also decarbonisation around the world, for example, we can reduce the cost of borrowing to build renewable energy in, say, Nigeria.” 

A prerequisite of Prof Forster’s CCC role is that he remains broadly apolitical, lest the credibility of his advice be compromised by perceived partiality.

But he does worry that, faced with the apparently conflicting priorities of high office, governments often tend to do far less than they say they do. For example, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, recently said that government plans to build new gas-fired power stations were in line with the recommendations of the CCC, which has said a “small amount” of gas generation without carbon capture is compatible with a decarbonised power system.

Prof Forster said:

“That’s technically correct, but it’s all about the quantities. We need to talk about the trajectories. In the 2035 timeframe he spoke about – that’s only a 10-year timeframe – we think there’ll be instances where we do need to get a little bit of electricity generation from gas. But if you look at the quantities of it, its tiny. It’s only about 1 or 2% of the country’s energy supply. So it does almost completely disappear by our 2035 target. After that time, we expect to go completely to renewables potentially, but that will take a bit more time. Basically, the amount of gas we need in this country is expected to decline, and decline very significantly.”

Taking the difficult decisions on climate change is not something every government is willing to do, but which one would be best placed – or most able – to do that is not something that Prof Forster, as arguably the country’s foremost climate scientist, can comment on. But he said: 

“I can’t say which party would be best for the environment, but I definitely would say that whichever party gets in, they have to get on with it.  

“What I’m a bit worried about currently is the things that need to be done. For example, we had an announcement just recently saying that they’re going to delay the clean heat market mechanism. This is to make air-source heat-pumps much more attractive compared with gas boilers, and just by delaying it and trying to call for one more consultation, it kicks the whole thing slightly into the long grass. Quite a lot of things are being kicked into the long grass.  

“Exactly the same thing is happening with bio-energy and carbon capture, with a big pipeline going into the North Sea.  

“On these very big decisions, we need to see a government that is bold enough to do it.” 

Those “very big decisions” span a wide range of policy areas. In agriculture, he’d like to see less farmland given over to cattle and more reforested, in housing he’d like all newbuilds to be fitted with an air-source heat-pump to head off the necessity of retrofitting them in 20 years’ time, and he’d like HS2 and the Trans-Pennine high-speed lines built too. He said: 

“Whatever big infrastructure the government can build that is sustainable is a really good thing to do.

“Remember all the fuss about building the Channel Tunnel, and how much it cost? We can’t survive without it now, and that is a really good thing for our economy, ultimately. These things are worth it.” 

He adds: 

“You have to come up with a solution that works for everyone. You have to be quite pragmatic, and I think the more we can be based on the evidence and the more we can try and take the political shenanigans out of it, I think that is ultimately the way to get to where you want to go.” 

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Lib Dems hit back at ‘out of touch’ Andrew Jones

The Liberal Democrats have accused Conservative MP Andrew Jones of being “out of touch” after he claimed the local party had “totally gone rogue”.

Mr Jones cited eight examples of alleged “appalling behaviour” after it emerged this week the Lib Dems have been reported to the police for wrongly claiming the Green Party was not contesting next month’s Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone by-election for a seat on North Yorkshire Council.

The Harrogate and Knaresborough MP published a letter he has sent to Lib Dem leader Ed Davey urging him to intervene.

Asked to respond to Mr Jones’ letter, a Lib Dem spokesperson said:

“At the next general election people in Harrogate and Knaresborough have a clear choice. They can back an out of touch MP or get real change with the Liberal Democrats.

“Harrogate and Knaresborough’s Conservative MP has supported a government that’s allowed sewage into our rivers and brought our NHS to its knees – many people are now backing Tom Gordon and the Lib Dem team who are fighting for a fair deal for the people of Harrogate and Knaresborough.”

Tom Gordon is the Lib Dems parliamentary candidate in Harrogate and Knaresborough at the general election.

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Cosy Club Harrogate to close on Monday

Cosy Club in Harrogate will serve its last customers on Monday next week.

The Cambridge Street bar and restaurant will close its doors permanently at 5pm on April 1 after the site did not perform as well as expected.

The first Cosy Club opened in 2010 and the Harrogate venue only opened two years ago.

The Cosy Club brand is run by Loungers Ltd, which also operates the Claro Lounge in Ripon. The chain describes itself on its website as a place for “relaxed dining, drinking and lounging in a fabulous, welcoming setting”.

Cosy Club in Harrogate.

Cosy Club in Harrogate

Aaron Webb, manager of Cosy Club Harrogate said:

“Our last day will be April 1. The site is too large to make any money and head office told us we are closing. It was poor planning for the location and there are no plans to relocate in Harrogate. It is not ideal.”

The Cosy Club restaurants in York and Leeds will remain open.

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Police renew appeal to find missing Harrogate man

North Yorkshire Police has renewed its appeal to find a man missing from the Harrogate area.

Cao Xuan Tuan, 25, has been missing since last month. He was last seen on Thursday, February 29.

Officers described Cao as Asian, with short straight black hair, brown eyes and about 5 foot 6 inches tall.

In a statement today, police said:

“We’re growing increasingly concerned for Cao’s welfare and are asking for anyone who may have seen him, or knows where he is, to contact us immediately.

“Cao, if you are reading this, please get in touch with someone, we just want to know that you are safe.

If you have seen Cao, or have information contact 101. If you know his immediate whereabouts, please call 999.

Quote North Yorkshire Police reference number 12240041667.

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